Throughput performance evaluation of two-tier TDMA for sensor networks

Time division multiple access (TDMA) is suitable for the energy efficiency requirement of wireless sensor networks (WSN) since it avoids idle listening and collisions. We introduce a two-tier-TDMA structure to describe and analyze a TDMA-based converge cast WSN. In our model, each cluster head is responsible for forwarding data from ordinary nodes of its cluster to a super cluster head. This paper presents derivations and simulations of the two-tier TDMA performance in terms of throughput. We consider scenarios with different cluster sizes, signal fading and inter-cluster interference.